


Within a Forest Dark

by Squibstress



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28655556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squibstress/pseuds/Squibstress
Summary: Severus Snape expects his journey at Hogwarts to be dark and lonely. He’s right. Mostly. But he finds friendship in an unexpected place.
Relationships: Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape
Comments: 21
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

_Midway upon the journey of our life_  
_I found myself within a forest dark,_  
_For the straightforward pathway had been lost._

~ Dante Alighieri, _The Divine Comedy_

* * *

## One

**20 December 1981**

_What the hell am I doing here?_

This isn’t the first time the thought has crossed Severus’s mind recently. In fact, he thinks, the entire four months of his employment at Hogwarts have been an exercise in What the Hell? Or maybe just “Hell.”

But this really tears it.

No one wants him here, least of all the blushing bride. But Dumbledore asked him to come, and Severus isn’t stupid enough to misunderstand a command just because it comes in the form of a request. So here he is, the only one in severe black dress robes. They hang on his frame, diminished as it still is by his sojourn in Azkaban. He wonders if his appetite will ever return.

He sneaks a surreptitious glance at McGonagall—not blushing, of course, but smiling in a way he’s seldom seen her do. Maybe he’s never seen it. Merlin knows he has paid little attention to Minerva McGonagall before, except as his passable—oh, all right, _competent_ —Transfiguration instructor for seven years and, of course, as the infuriating Head of the House of Potter, Black, and Lupin. Now that she’s Severus’s “superior,” he supposes he should at least learn to read her a little better.

She’s standing next to her new husband. Or _old_ husband, Severus thinks, smirking to himself. Naturally, she’s married some self-important git from Magical Law Enforcement. They’re a perfect fit, the be-bunned, rule-bound deputy headmistress and the tweed-and-old-school-tie enforcer of the Ministry’s might and right. And he’s old enough not to want much in the way of sex, Severus thinks, which should suit her to the ground.

To blot out the mental image of the old man huffing and puffing over her that’s popped unhelpfully into Severus’s unruly brain, he thinks back to his hearing in front of the Wizengamot. He tries to picture McGonagall’s husband wearing deep-purple robes and a poncy square hat, but he can’t quite separate the memory of a single face from the sea of stony jaws and narrowed eyes that confronted him in the Ministry courtroom. If Elphinstone Urquart was among the judges, Severus thinks, he likely voted to send the Death Eater back to Azkaban.

Not that a sentence at Hogwarts will be much better.

He looks around at the other guests, recognising only his “colleagues,” none of whom has bothered to speak to him. And why would they?

He’s only here at Dumbledore’s insistence, which is the same reason they tolerate him, he knows.

He looks down at the goblet of mead the house-elf has pressed on him. He’s tempted to knock it back in a single gulp, but he’s not much used to drink, and he doesn’t want to risk it.

An unwelcome voice comes from just behind him.

“Severus, my boy, why are you skulking in the corner? Why don’t you go congratulate the happy couple?”

_Fuck._

The last thing he wants is to join the line of well-wishers shaking hands with the bride and groom, but he recognises that Dumbledore is giving him an out—surely he can leave after offering the requisite inanities—so he puts his goblet down on the nearest table and stalks over to them.

Sprout is gushing at the couple. “I can’t wait to help you with the planting. Of course, Minerva’s not got much of a green thumb, but I’ll trust you to keep everything alive despite her best efforts.”

Urquart laughs. “Thank you, Pomona. I’ll look forward to getting my hands dirty in the garden. It’s one of the chief reasons we bought the place.”

Sprout notices Severus and moves away a fraction. “Congratulations, again. I’m just so happy for you!” She squeezes McGonagall’s hand and scurries off to the safety of the far end of the staff room, which bears the unmistakable, over-florid hallmarks of her work on every horizontal surface.

McGonagall fixes Severus with a beady eye, and he has an awful moment when he thinks his voice won’t work, but he clears his throat and says, “Professor McGonagall, Mr Urquart, my congratulations.”

McGonagall’s face is inscrutable, he’ll give her that. No disdain curves her lips and her brow neither furrows nor raises as she says, “Thank you, Professor Snape.”

He nods quickly at Urquart and moves off before the old man can say anything.


	2. Chapter 2

## Two

**31 October 1982**

“Well, I think that’s enough for today,” Dumbledore says. “Unless anyone has anything to add to the agenda?” He looks around the table. “No? Meeting adjourned, then. And I wish you all a lovely day.”

Severus is up before any of the other staff, intent on making his escape while the rest of them lumber to their feet, exchanging the usual chitchat or helping themselves to one last cuppa before heading out to their blissfully Hogwarts-free evenings.

“Professor Snape, a word?”

_Damn._

He’s cornered. McGonagall stands between him and a quick exit. He glances at Dumbledore, wondering if she’s doing the old man’s bidding, but the Headmaster is deep in conversation with Professor Babbling. Or appears to be.

_Why can’t they leave me in peace?_

Severus wants only to retreat to the chilly, subterranean rooms that were his reward for turning on the Dark Lord last year. Now that Slughorn has retired, Severus could have asked Dumbledore for Slughorn’s old quarters, but he didn’t, and the Headmaster didn’t offer.

Severus tries not to look too longingly at the door.

“Professor McGonagall.”

“Would you mind stopping by my office for a few minutes before dinner? I was hoping to speak with you now, but I have a meeting with my prefects that should have started five minutes ago,” she says.

“Certainly, Professor. Will five-thirty do?”

“Fine. I’ll see you then.”

She hurries out, and Severus waits a minute, pretending to be going over the notes he didn’t take during the meeting, to avoid following too closely on her heels.

At the appointed hour, he makes his way to McGonagall’s office. He’s only been in it once before, and at the time, he was hardly in any mental condition to take it in. It’s a bit bigger than the closet they gave him, and the large window overlooks the east courtyard, now shrouded in the darkness of an autumn evening. Reflected flames from the fireplace dance in the leaded glass panes.

“Please, have a seat, Professor Snape.”

She indicates a chair near the fireplace rather than the one in front of her desk and takes the one next to it.

There is nothing for it but to sit next to her, so he does. The room is warm, and he perspires under the multiple layers of wool he wears. He notices that she isn’t wearing a teaching robe, and he curses himself for putting his on before coming to see her. It looks defensive.

“I’ve been meaning to check in with you on how you’re getting on.”

She’s looking at him expectantly.

“Fine,” he says. “Why, is there some problem?”

“Not at all. But you’ve taken on a great deal this term, and I want to be certain you know you can call on your colleagues should you find yourself in need of help or advice.”

Dread wells up in him. Teaching the lower levels for the past year has been bad enough. He hated it, but he managed. Slughorn seemed pleased with him, anyway, but that might just have been the relief of having someone else take on the lion’s—or snake’s—share of his teaching duties.

Severus dreaded taking over the N.E.W.T. classes this term. Those students overlapped with his seventh year at Hogwarts, and he worried that they would remember him as “Snivellus.” But, surprisingly, N.E.W.T. classes have been the one bright spot in his otherwise hideous life. The students, if they remember him at all, don’t show it. The seven adolescents that make up the class seem to actually respect his knowledge of his subject, and one or two of them aren’t complete dunderheads.

But now the deputy headmistress wants to talk about his work this term. Unhappy experience tells him that, just when he’s found something to care about, it gets yanked away.

“I don’t believe teaching N.E.W.T.-level Potions is beyond my capabilities.”

Something that looks like a smile passes briefly over her face. “I didn’t think it was,” she says. “But with Horace’s retirement, you’ve also become the Head of Slytherin. That’s a great deal to take on. I just wanted to see if there was anything I, or the other Heads of House, could help you with.

“Why? Have there been complaints?”

The last thing Severus wanted was to become a Head of House, but it goes with the teaching job. And it’s an excuse to force Severus to continue to live in the castle, under the watchful eye of Dumbledore. And McGonagall.

“No, Severus,” she says, and he doesn’t fail to notice her use of his given name.

She peers at him, as if waiting for something, and he realises that he is expected to speak. Except he has nothing to say to this woman.

Too late to avoid an awkward silence, he says, “I believe I am managing my additional responsibilities adequately.”

“I’m sure you are doing admirably by the students. But I wonder how you are coping on a personal level. Living in the castle can be hard on a young person.”

In the firelight, her skin seems to glow, and her eyes are clear, and it occurs to him that she is younger than he thought.

As a student, he never considered the ages of any of his teachers—they all fell somewhere between old and ancient—and though he’s been a “colleague” for the past year, he still hasn’t thought much about them beyond figuring out who can be relied upon to avoid annoying small talk at meals and staff meetings.

McGonagall, he now realises, must have been quite young when she started teaching. When Severus began his first year as a student in 1971, she’d already been deputy headmistress for a few years. It has always been difficult for him to accurately gauge the age of witches and wizards—some seem to age faster than others—but looking at McGonagall now, he’d put her somewhere in her mid-forties.

As if reading his mind, she says, “I was your age when I began teaching and living in the castle. Although I very much wanted to be here, it was difficult adjustment after living in London for two years.”

In her subtle way, she has let him know that she’s aware that he’s only here because he has nowhere else to go. Maybe she should have been a Slytherin, he thinks with a grudging admiration.

“I find the living arrangements satisfactory,” he says.

“Good.” She continues to peer at him, and he doesn’t know if he’s expected to say more.

He wishes she would dismiss him as she did when he was a student; he doesn’t have any idea when it’s acceptable to end this interaction.

She says, “Now that I reside outside the castle, I’ve had to adjust all over again, and it has reminded me of how different living here is. The lack of privacy, oddly combined with the feeling that one is totally alone, can be jarring, as I recall.”

He’s surprised to find that she’s hit the nail directly on the head. Severus is surrounded by more people on a more consistent basis than he has been since leaving school, and yet he is lonelier than he has ever been. Before the Dark Lord’s fall, he had at least the illusion of friends, however fraught and twisted those relationships were. All those former “friends” are in Azkaban, except Lucius, who hasn’t bothered to send a single owl to Severus since buying his own way out of a cell. Not that Severus can blame him. Any contact between them would look suspicious, and Severus is certain Dumbledore would furl his mighty brow, putting an end to it.

He hazards a glance at McGonagall, who is looking into the fire, although he has the impression that her thoughts are far away.

He wonders fleetingly what first drove her away from life on the outside, and what has made her embrace it again after all these years.

“Well,” she says, standing. “I suppose we’d best gird our loins for this year’s Halloween feast and the hijinks that are sure to follow.”

It dawns on Severus why she has selected today of all days for this little palaver. She’s afraid the first anniversary of Lily’s death is going to drive him to do something foolish.

Well, she’s wasted her concern.

He’s cried all the tears and rent all the garments he’s going to over it. None of it has assuaged one molecule of his guilt and pain, and it never will. Lily is gone, and nothing he does can ever change that. He will simply live out his penance here, under Dumbledore’s crooked nose and McGonagall’s beady eye, with the inane chatter of three hundred children for company. That is his lot. That, and loneliness.

He looks at McGonagall and wonders what kind of shrift she was seeking when she arrived at Hogwarts at the tender age of twenty-one.

Maybe she’s found it, and that’s why she has been able to move on, if only to a tiny cottage in Hogsmeade, with a man old enough to be her father.

“Professor? Shall we?”

Her tone is amused, as if she knows he’s thinking about her. He stands and follows her out to face All Hallows Eve and his head full of ghosts.


	3. Chapter 3

## Three

**21 December 1985**

# 

“Will you be attending the Headmaster’s Christmas party?”

Severus only notices the sudden silence at the staff table when the sound of his own chewing becomes unbearably loud in his ears.

He looks up from his gristly chop to find the collective eyes of the staff and the six students who have remained at the school for the holidays fixed on him. Most look quickly away as his gaze darts around the table.

“What?” he says, unsure of who has spoken.

The bright blue eyes of the new Astronomy teacher, Aurora Sinistra, are blinking at him.

“I only wondered if you were planning on going,” she says. “I thought we might walk over together.”

_What the fuck?_

Is she asking him out?

The smirk on Dumbledore’s face as he pretends to focus on slathering his baked potato with butter provides Severus with his answer.

“I’m not going,” Severus says, and turns back to his plate.

“That’s too bad. I hear The Three Broomsticks puts on a jolly party.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Sinistra is apparently undeterred.

“I’ll be heading over around eight. If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” she says.

“I won’t.”

That shuts her up.

After dinner, as Severus makes for the stairs to the dungeons, Dumbledore’s long stride catches him up.

“That was unkind,” he says.

“What was unkind?”

“The way you dismissed Professor Sinistra. She was only trying to be friendly.”

Severus snorts. “I don’t need any _friends_.”

“Everyone needs friends, Severus.”

Severus stops and scowls at Dumbledore.

“When I want friends, I’ll select my own, thank you.”

The old man’s eyes crinkle into an annoying smile.

“That’s an excellent idea, my boy.”

As the Headmaster strides off, he calls, “Enjoy your evening.”

Severus stands there for a moment, watching the crimson-clad figure disappear down the corridor.

Safely back in his quarters, he lights the fire with a flick of his hand and settles into his favourite chair with the book he’s bought himself— _Ancient Charms for Novel Problems._

Sinistra is certainly a novel problem, Severus thinks. No one has ever chatted him up before.

He wonders if she’ll try it again.

Probably not, but on the chance that she’s a dunderhead (probably) or a masochist (unlikely), Severus considers what he should do.

He has no interest in the woman, or in socialising in general, but he does, he must admit, have an interest in fucking. A theoretical interest, that is.

But fucking, he has observed, usually comes with other, less theoretically pleasant things, like talking. On the whole, he decides, it’s better to do without.

Even if Sinistra has nice tits.

He wakes with a start two hours later, having fallen asleep in his chair with his neck at an awkward angle. When he tries to move, it sends a stabbing pain down his upper back and left arm. The pain is a remnant of an old injury, courtesy of James Potter, sustained when the swine pulled him from the ladder that would have led him through the trapdoor into the Shrieking Shack and, most likely, into the jaws and down the gullet of Remus Lupin.

The pain of the pinched nerve is compounded by Severus’s knowledge that just about everyone—except maybe Lupin—would have been better off had Potter not got wind of Black’s little prank and stopped it.

Severus gets up and goes to his bathroom to retrieve the potion that will soothe the inflamed nerve, but the phial is empty.

_Fuck_.

He could just ignore it and go to bed, but he knows that if he doesn’t take the potion, the pain will be worse tomorrow, and his left arm will be all but useless for several days.

Fortunately, it’s a simple potion, but he’ll need to retrieve the ingredients from his stores.

He’s warding the door to the Potions supply room when he hears a noise. Pulling his wand, he moves quietly down the corridor and around the corner, hoping that the student he’s about to catch out of bed is a Gryffindor. Taking points from them is still more satisfying than Severus would like to admit.

What he finds is a Gryffindor, but it isn’t a student. It’s Minerva McGonagall.

Astonishingly, she’s sitting on the top step of the staircase that leads to Gryffindor Tower, arms folded across her knees, looking blankly off into the middle distance.

As Severus draws cautiously closer, he can see that her eyes are wet.

He wishes he hadn’t approached—he has no idea what to do with a crying woman—but she’s seen him, and he can’t retreat now without looking like a complete coward.

“Professor McGonagall … are you … can I … do you need any assistance?”

She wipes her sleeve across her eyes, surprising him ( _no handkerchief?_ ), and blinks several times.

“No, thank you, Severus. I couldn’t sleep and decided to take a walk. Being back in the castle is … disconcerting.”

He hasn’t seen her since the death of her husband several weeks ago, but he recalls that Dumbledore has told the staff she would be resuming her position as Head of Gryffindor and moving back into her old rooms in the tower over the holidays.

A moment of _schadenfreude_ passes over him—she has failed at living outside as much as he has—but he’s grown enough over the past few years to recognise the thought as beneath him and more unkind than even he can stomach.

Nevertheless, he can’t bring himself to offer any of the expected condolences. He received none after Lily’s death, and he can’t imagine that they are any comfort to the bereaved, anyway.

She stands and wipes her palms on her skirt.

“It’s late, and I should be abed. Are you on rounds?” she asks.

“No. I needed something from the Potions closet.”

It occurs to him that he actually does have something to offer her, something better than meaningless _I’m sorry for your loss-_ es.

He says, “I have a very mild sedative potion. It will help you sleep, but it won’t make you groggy in the morning, and it isn’t habit-forming. I’d be happy to get you some.”

Her eyes grow watery again, alarming him.

“No, thank you, Severus. It’s kind of you to offer, but I think sleeplessness is part of the process. Best to get it over with.”

He has the impression that she’s offered him a glimpse of her grief, and he’s absurdly touched. He doesn’t know her well, but he knows her enough to understand that she, like himself, is averse to showing any weakness.

It’s odd to observe the phenomenon in others—at least, in others who aren’t afraid that their moments of vulnerability will be used against them by a mad wizard or his sycophants. It gives Severus a brief vision of himself that isn’t entirely unwelcome.

“May I walk you to your quarters, Professor?” he asks, surprising himself.

She surprises him further by accepting.

When they arrive at her door, she offers him her hand.

“Thank you, Severus.”

Her eyes hold his for a moment before he turns away.

“Goodnight, Professor.”

“Goodnight.”


	4. Chapter 4

## Four

**1 November 1986**

Minerva looks surprised to see him as he slides into his place next to her on the bench.

“Were you hoping I wouldn’t show up?” he asks. “Because that wouldn’t keep you from having to pay up when Slytherin trounces your team.”

“A bit overconfident, I’d say,” Minerva says, surveying the Quidditch pitch with a practised eye. “Charlie Weasley has proved to be an excellent Keeper.”

Severus scoffs. “A third-year and still green. He’s no match for Gupta, especially on the Nimbus 1700.”

The challenge animates Minerva’s face into a predatory grin.

“Five Galleons says she doesn’t get anything past him. Keeping is an intelligence game. Weasley doesn’t need the latest broom model to anticipate Gupta’s every move,” she says.

“Five Galleons it is.”

As the match begins, it occurs to Severus that Minerva expected him to be hungover this morning. Last night was the five-year anniversary of Lily’s death, and he spent the day in a black fugue of temper, deducting points from everyone, including twenty-five from his own House, sending even the staff scurrying out of his way with the merest twitch of his eyebrow. Except Minerva, of course. She is curiously immune to his barbs and scowls. In fact, Severus thinks, she seems to take a perverse pleasure in them, giving him an amused look each time he growls something derogatory about her or someone she likes.

At the Halloween feast, while he shovelled his mashed peas around his plate as if they were the detritus from some mad, green construction site, she told him, “I’ll take your rounds tonight.”

He smushed his fork crossly into the green goo on his plate. “I’m perfectly capable of doing rounds.”

“Yes, but given your mood, I’m afraid if you catch any Gryffindors out of bed, we’ll end up in the negative for House points.”

He grunted at her and gave up on the peas.

He let her cover his rounds, but he didn’t get drunk. Instead, he spent most of All Hallows Eve with a mediocre book, capping it off with a better-than-mediocre wank to relieve the day’s tension.

The grief over Lily’s death has subsided over the years, although the guilt is as strong as it ever was. Severus wonders if Minerva’s grief has yet mellowed into the dull ache he experiences when he thinks about Lily Evans. In the months following Urquart’s unexpected demise, Minerva seemed to settle back into life at Hogwarts with a minimum of fuss. Of course, “minimum of fuss” was her armour. She might have been getting legless every night for all Severus knew, and no one would have been the wiser.

But he didn’t think so.

He and Minerva have become … not friends, exactly, but friend-adjacent. They don’t share confidences, but they do play the occasional game of chess when one or the other of them needs a diversion from whatever is plaguing them. It’s mostly Minerva who initiates, although Severus suspects she offers a match whenever he’s in a particularly foul mood, not because she wants to entertain him, but because she knows he will be distracted.

She likes to win, does Minerva McGonagall.

Which is why it’s so much fun to goad her over Quidditch.

For the past two years, the Slytherin team has been on the ascendant, with Gryffindor—their only real rival, let’s be honest—losing their best players to graduation, while Severus’s House team has had a bumper crop of younger talented players come on. He’s looking forward to winning the cup again this year, Charlie Weasley, or no Charlie Weasley.

The match is a good one, and Minerva is clearly energised by it. Her cheeks are pinked and as her eyes dart back and forth across the pitch, following the plays, Severus can’t help noticing their colour. It’s distracting, actually. They’re green, but not the emerald of Lily’s. Minerva’s are a deeper shade, muddy and flecked with brown. He always thought Lily’s eyes were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, but his memory of them is tainted by the last time he saw them, open and empty, staring sightlessly at the cot from which her son had recently been rescued.

A roar from the Gryffindor stands returns his attention to the Quidditch pitch. Weasley has managed a spectacular save, apparently.

Severus scowls, and Minerva claps excitedly.

The Weasley boy is good, Severus must admit, but not good enough. Sarala Gupta puts the Quaffle past him on two occasions, winning Slytherin the match and Severus his bet. Not a bad morning.

Minerva’s lips purse when he tells her he’ll be by to collect his winnings after lunch.

At two o’clock, he goes by her office, but she isn’t there. After a short debate with himself, he goes to her quarters and knocks.

When she opens the door, he says, “Avoiding me, Minerva? If you’re skint at the moment, just tell me. You can owe me at a rate of, say, two Sickles interest per week.”

“The day I can’t pay off on a wager is the day you manage to wandlessly Transfigure Albus into a peacock.” She opens the door wider. “Come in.”

He hesitates. He’s never been in her private quarters before. Their chess games always take place in the staff room—neutral territory, insofar as anywhere in Hogwarts is neutral to Severus Snape.

His step over her threshold feels like a Moment. To cover his hyperawareness of it, he says, “Albus doesn’t need to be Transfigured into a bird to be a peacock.”

She snorts a laugh. “True enough. But I’d like to see it, all the same.”

He raises an eyebrow, and she goes to get the money from her bag.

“Five Galleons,” she says, counting the coins into his palm.

He deposits the money into his pocket. “Thank you.”

“It’s a bit early, but would you like a cup of tea?”

“Tea?”

“Yes, you know … it’s that drink with water and leaves. Some people also put milk in it, or sugar or lemon, although I think we can agree that they are heathens.”

“Tea would be acceptable.”

“And would Brodie’s also be acceptable, or would you prefer something less potent?”

“Brodie’s is fine.”

Severus is more of a coffee man, which Minerva doubtless knows, but tea is what she drinks, and he doesn’t dislike the notion of staying for a bit.

A few minutes later, they’re on her settee with a pot of tea and a plate of Dundee biscuits on the table in front of them.

Severus is more comfortable than he imagined he’d be, sitting here with her in her private rooms. Her mantle holds several photographs, and he can’t help looking at them, wondering who the people are. There’s one of Minerva and her husband. It’s a Muggle photo, charmingly informal, as if the photographer caught them unawares. Urquart has a wicked-looking smile and a glint in his eye, and Minerva is laughing. Several strands of hair have come out of her bun, and her hand is raised to move them out of her eyes. In the photo, she looks more relaxed than Severus can ever recall her being in real life.

She follows his gaze. “Dad took that a few months before Elph died. We were at the manse in Caithness.”

“The manse?”

“My father’s manse. He was a Muggle clergyman.”

Severus reaches into his mind to fish for information about Minerva’s family and realises that he has none.

“You knew that I was a half-blood, I presume?” she says.

Did he?

“I did,” he says.

There’s a brief silence, then he says, “Did you grow up as a Muggle?”

“For the most part. The subject of magic was a bit fraught in our house.”

“Because of your father’s profession?”

“No. Because my mother didn’t tell him she was a witch until after I was born and started showing signs of magic.”

“That must have been quite a surprise.”

“Yes. Not a pleasant one, I think.”

She pours herself more tea and offers some to Severus.

The tea is acrid, strong enough to trot a Hippogriff on, but Severus wants an excuse to stay. He’s about to ask more about her family, when she says, “And you? Were you raised Muggle?”

The subject isn’t one he wants to discuss with her, but he supposes it would be rude to refuse to answer, and he doesn’t feel like being rude to her at the moment.

He takes a sip of his tea before speaking.

“Not entirely. My father liked the idea of magic. He thought marrying my mother was his ticket out of the slums, but when it turned out not to be so, he decided that magic and all its practitioners were con artists, so …”

“So?”

“Things became unpleasant.”

“I’m sorry.”

The heat rises in his face, irritating him.

“Don’t pity me, Minerva.”

Her eyebrows raise at his sudden change of tone.

“It isn’t pity, Severus. It’s empathy. There’s a difference.”

“I know that,” he snaps. “I don’t need your empathy, either.”

She sighs.

“All right. Since the topic of our respective upbringings seems to be off the table, why don’t we have a game of chess? I have a set here.”

Chess.

The prospect of a game he can win chases the irritation away.

“All right.”

As she sets up the board, he says, “Care to lose another five Galleons?”

She turns, eyebrow quirked in that funny way she does when he’s said something unintentionally amusing.

“Those Galleons won’t have time to grow warm in your pocket, lad,” she says.

In the end, he doesn’t even mind when he loses.


	5. Chapter 5

## Five

**4 July 1989**

 _The woman is impossible_ , Snape thinks as he and Minerva face off, his arms folded protectively against his chest, her hands on her hips in a pose reminiscent of a mother coaxing a recalcitrant child into eating its greens.

Here they are, in the wrong place, and she wants to stay and have dinner.

“We have to eat, Severus.”

Her mild, sensible tone makes him want to hex her with painful boils.

“We should figure out how to get back,” he says.

“Until we know where we are, there isn’t much point. We have no idea if we can Apparate home from here. Where are you going?”

He has turned and stalked off down the street, his black trench coat billowing out behind him like a cloud of ill will.

“I’m going to find out where this useless piece of shite has landed us,” he says when she catches him up. He’s holding up the Portkey—a Muggle torch—and shaking it, wishing he were throttling the misbegotten Ministry functionary who charmed the damn thing.

“Somewhere in America, I believe,” she says, and he stops and turns to face her.

“How do you know that?”

“The automobiles. They’re driving on the right-hand side of the road. And we aren’t in Europe, Asia, or South America, because the signs are all in English.”

He looks around. She’s right. The road is less than busy in this side street, but the cars that have passed have been on the wrong side of the road for Britain. And the triangular sign at the junction of two roads reads “Yield” rather than “Give Way”. The sign warning of a detour at N Washington St could only be American.

“Bloody hell,” he says.

If they are in America, they’re stuck until they can arrange another Portkey, as they can’t Apparate back across the Atlantic Ocean.

She says, “Let’s go into that restaurant, find out where we are, and we can have something to eat while we figure out the best way to get back.”

Somehow, he finds himself sitting across from her over a table covered in a checked plastic cloth. A waiter with a nearly impenetrable accent puts a pair of enormous menus into their hands.

“Can I get youse anything to drink?” he asks before they’ve even had a chance to open them.

“A bottle of your house red would be fine,” Minerva says, and the waiter scurries off to the no-doubt rat-infested kitchen.

“If you drink too much, you won’t be able to Apparate anywhere, and I have no intention of letting you vomit on me after a Side-Along,” Severus says.

“I can hold my liquor better than you can, lad. Besides, we won’t be Apparating anywhere tonight. We are in Rome, New York, and in Rome, New York, we stay until we can get to a city with a MACUSA office that can arrange a new Portkey.”

“You know this how?”

“I picked this up at the front door.” She holds up a small, rectangular card bearing the legend:

_Mangiare!_  
_Authentic Italian Kitchen_  
_426 N. Washington St._  
_Rome, NY 13440._  
_Dine In or Take Out_

_Free Deliviry over $25_

_(310) 555-5436_

“What imbecile of a low-level Ministry halfwit charms a Portkey to go to Rome, New York, rather than Rome, Italy?” Severus says through clenched teeth.

“One with a somewhat tenuous grasp of geography, I should think.”

“For fuck’s _sake,”_ he mutters.

She puts on her glasses, opens her menu, and reviews the offerings.

He narrows his eyes at her. “You’re awfully calm about this.”

She closes the menu again and sighs. “Portkey errors happen, Severus. I once spent two days in Aqaba when I was supposed to go to Ballycastle for a christening because someone transposed two digits of the coordinates.”

“And you find this acceptable?”

“Not in the least. But I had a marvellous time in Jordan.” She takes up her menu again. “I recommend sticking with a simple pasta dish. Most restaurants can manage an acceptable red sauce.”

His spaghetti and meatballs are indeed acceptable, but the wine is terrible. He drinks it anyway.

How they wind up at a hotel called “Hampton Inn” is a bit of a blur.

But here they are. They’ve got two rooms, and when Severus gets to his, he drops his bag on one bed—why there are two double beds in a single room, he can’t fathom—and flops onto the other. The room is a bit spinny. Severus rarely drinks, and he realises he finished most of the bottle of wine on his own. He considers casting a Sober-Up Charm on himself but decides to enjoy the sensation of tipsiness.

For once, he has no pressing responsibilities. Not even, it turns out, the presentation he was supposed to give tomorrow morning on safety in advanced potions pedagogy at the European Magical Educators Conference. It’s an odd feeling, this unexpected freedom. He could go downstairs and have another drink. He could walk out into the night, a young-ish man in a foreign—if somewhat uncosmopolitan—city. He could walk out and never come back. He could—

A knock on his door rips him back into reality.

He stalks to it and pulls it open.

Minerva, of course.

“If you’ve had a chance to settle in, we should make a plan for tomorrow,” she says.

He scowls at her, and she quirks her amused eyebrow at him.

“May I come in?”

He opens the door wider, and she enters his room.

“Amazing. They look exactly alike, down to the terrible artwork,” she remarks, throwing a gimlet eye at the still-life of a seaside, all anaemic pastels and fuzzy lines, that hangs over one bed.

She eyes Severus up and down, then pulls a bottle from under her coat. “It’s against my interests, I’m afraid, but I’ve brought a bottle of Firewhisky to chase away the memory of that dreadful wine. Would you like some? Unless you think you’ve already had too much.”

It’s the challenge in her voice that makes him agree. He locates a pair of glasses in the bathroom and thinks about how bizarre Americans are as he rips the ridiculous paper guards from them.

She pours two fingers of liquor into each glass and hands him one.

“ _Slàinte_.” She raises her glass and clinks it against his.

The drink heats his belly pleasantly. He thinks blearily that he’ll probably have to brew a Hangover Potion from his travel kit tomorrow, but that’s easy enough.

“Our best option is to go to New York City tomorrow and get a new Portkey from the MACUSA office there,” she says. “I imagine they can do an expedited one that will get us to Rome—the correct Rome—by tomorrow evening. I’m sorry you’ll have to miss your presentation, but I can still conceivably get there in time for mine, and we’ll be able to attend a few talks. Have you ever been to New York?”

“No.”

“I have. I can give you a Side-Along.” She quirks an eyebrow at him. “That is, if you promise not to vomit on me.”

“If you can manage a smooth Apparition, my upper digestive system should comply.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs at, let’s say, eight, and we can find a safe place to Apparate from,” she says. “And after we arrange the new Portkey, you can see a little of the city while we wait for it.”

“I’m not here for sightseeing.” The idea of following her around New York City like a tourist—like her student—sours his stomach.

She puts her glass down.

“Suit yourself. I’ll just say goodnight.”

Only, Severus finds he’s reluctant for her to leave.

“Top me off before you go,” he says, holding out his glass.

She turns and looks at him, as if considering what to do with this disagreeable, churlish, and, if truth be told, drunk, man. She hesitates before pouring them both another finger of liquor and sitting back down on the bed.

“When were you in New York?” he asks. He doesn’t really care about her American adventures, but he wants to keep her talking. Keep her there.

“In the early ’seventies,” she says.

“For business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure. For me, anyway. I was with a friend who was here on business in the summer of ’seventy-three. They had the first Piasa Bird in captivity in the Central Park Magical Zoo. My friend was—is—a Magizoologist.”

A private smile twitches at the corners of her mouth, and Severus finds himself more interested in her trip than he’d thought.

“You came to see the Piasa Bird?” he asks.

“The Americans invited prominent magical naturalists from around the world to study it for six weeks. My friend was one of the scholars invited.”

“Did you stay with him for six weeks?”

“Her. Yes.”

“Oh.”

_Oh._

Severus frowns. “I thought…”

“What did you think, Severus?” Is that amusement glittering in Minerva’s eyes? Or is she pissed too?

“Nothing. A mistaken assumption,” he says.

“As assumptions often are. Willa and I usually spent summers together.”

“Willa? Professor Grubbly-Plank?”

“Yes.”

An image pops into his head of Grubbly-Plank’s rough, tanned hands moving over pale, smooth flesh he tries not to imagine.

Severus shakes his head to clear it. He is obviously drunker than he thought.

“But … you were married,” he says.

“Willa and I split up in ’seventy-five. I married Elph in ’eighty-one, as you may remember.”

“Huh.” The sound that comes from Severus’s mouth is stupid. He feels stupid. His head is woolly.

As a student, Severus thought of Professor McGonagall as a missish bitch, even less sexual than the other teachers. His impression changed little when he joined the staff at Hogwarts, but over the years, he has learned that the dry wit he’d seen her display as a teacher is underpinned by a wryly wicked sense of humour that comes out when she’s among friends.

Which, Severus realises with some shock, seems to include him.

He considers what he’s just learned about her.

He has always assumed her marriage was sexless. Urquart was an old man, and she was … Professor McGonagall.

Except, sometime in the past years, she’s become Minerva. Who is quite a bit more interesting than Professor McGonagall, as it turns out.

“So you slept with men and women,” he says.

“More in the past tense than I’d like, but you have the gist of it.”

“At least you have a past tense.”

_Shit._

He said that out loud.

“I don’t imagine your life has lent itself to intimate relationships,” she says. He hates it when her voice gets kind.

He stands, heat rising in his cheeks.

“Don’t pity me, Minerva.”

“I don’t. You made your own choices.”

“And fucked up every single one.”

“You’re the only one who can determine that,” she says. “And you still have so many more choices to make.”

“Brilliant. A million more chances to fuck up.”

“Oh, dear,” she sighs. “Nothing worse than a self-pitying drunk.”

She gets up and moves towards the door.

“Wait.”

She turns, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Why are you friendly to me?”

“To be honest, Severus, sometimes I ask myself the same question.”

“And what do you tell yourself?”

“You are my colleague. I make it a policy to get on well with my colleagues. Especially the ones that live in the castle.”

Severus smirks. “Sybill.”

“There are exceptions.” She allows herself to share his smirk. “Besides, Severus, I like you.”

This hits him like a hex. Nobody _likes_ Severus Snape. Loathing and toleration are the width and breadth of others’ feelings about him, with a smattering of fear thrown in for good measure. That’s how he likes it. Only …

“I’m a bastard and a former Death Eater,” he says. “I’d have thought I’d be the last person _you’d_ like.

“I don’t like that you were a Death Eater, but the fact that you’re the only _former_ Death Eater I’m aware of is a point in your favour. You’re unique.”

She picks up her glass and pours another two fingers of Firewhisky into it while Severus ponders this statement.

“Your decision to join the Death Eaters was disappointing but not surprising,” she tells him.

“Because I was a Slytherin.”

The temperature in the room seems to drop several degrees. He’s hit a nerve somewhere without even trying, but he can’t enjoy it because the look on her face is so stricken.

“I don’t lump all Slytherins into the ‘likely to become a Dark wizard or witch’ category, Severus,” she says quietly. “I understand why you might have thought so in the past, but I thought you’d come to know me better since then.”

His mind is still muddled from the drink, but he senses an opportunity for attack. Only, he finds the idea of hurting Minerva—as opposed to getting one up on Professor McGonagall—floods his mouth with a surprising bitterness.

She sits down next to him on the edge of the bed, and he turns to her, but she isn’t looking at him. Instead, she stares into her glass.

“You were a young man with extraordinary talents and no outlet for them. You got no support from any of the adults in your life, including me, I’m sorry to say.”

Severus isn’t sure if it’s the drink both of them have imbibed, but the turn of the conversation seems very queer to him. Nevertheless, he wants to continue it, which is even queerer.

“You were the Head of Gryffindor,” he says. “I wasn’t your problem.”

“All the students were—and are—my responsibility. I knew how Horace was, knew that he wasn’t up to the task of guiding you. After his experiences with Tom Riddle, he was terrified of involving himself with powerful students, especially if they had personal difficulties. I should have offered you my help.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He has managed to keep the resentment out of his tone, but it sounds entirely too plaintive to his ears. The impulse to strike out verbally is nearly unbearable, but he finds he wants to hear her answer, so he forces his tongue to stay still.

“I was preoccupied. It’s no excuse, of course, but my hands were full with Sirius Black and his lot. The first Gryffindor from the House of Black was a big deal, and he needed a lot of support. At first, I thought the friendship with Potter would be a good thing for him, and in many ways, it was, but goodness knows it caused a lot of trouble. It feels as if I spent most of the ’seventies trying to keep Black in school and out of the Ministry’s juvenile detention cells.” She takes a large sip of her drink. “For all the good it did.”

She’s looking at him now, and her eyes are swimming, but the mention of Black and Potter has stoked his anger, so he can’t give her the forgiveness she seems to be asking for.

“Why didn’t you expel Black after what he did to me in fifth year?”

Severus realises that he’s been wanting to ask her this for years.

“We don’t expel students for that, and he and James spent ages in detention.”

Fury propels Severus to his feet.

“ _Detention_? You really think _detention_ is adequate punishment for trying to kill another student?”

She stands too, and huffs. “Don’t be dramatic, Severus. They were terrible bullies to you, there’s no denying that, and I will always regret not acting more decisively to stop it, but they were hardly trying to kill you.”

He’s shouting now, but he can’t seem to help it.

“Not trying to kill me? What do you call setting me up to fight a werewolf, a wee barry prank?”

Her eyebrows draw together in a confused line.

“What are you on about?” she says.

_Is it possible she really doesn’t know?_

“In my fifth year. Black told me how to find Lupin in the Shrieking Shack. Of course, he didn’t tell me what Lupin was. He just … let slip how to get past the Whomping Willow. I thought I was terribly clever, getting the secret out of Black. I thought I was going to catch Lupin shagging some boy from the village, or something. Maybe get him expelled. _Hah_!”

Severus’s face convulses with disgust at his own stupidity, but when he looks at Minerva, her eyes are wide and her face even paler than normal.

“What?” she says faintly. “He tried to … he tried …”

“You didn’t know?” He’s not sure if he believes her, but her shock seems genuine. Minerva keeps her feelings close to her sleeve, but she’s never been much of an actress.

“No,” she whispers. “I’d no idea.” She swallows audibly. “What happened?”

Severus gives her the capsule version: Black, willow, tunnel, werewolf, Potter.

“And no punishment for Black,” he finishes bitterly.

Minerva shakes her head in bewilderment. “Who else knew about it?”

“Who do you think?” he sneers.

She’s silent for a moment.

“Albus.” Her voice is stony, which gives Severus a frisson of pleasure.

“Severus, I swear to you he never told me. If he had …”

“If he had?”

“I would have known Sirius was a madman. Perhaps things would have turned out differently. For everyone.”

Severus suppresses a derisive snort. “What could you have done about it?”

“I would have insisted on expelling Sirius.” Her face is red now, and she’s gathering up steam. “If Albus had refused, I would have gone directly to the Governors.”

An odd feeling envelops Severus, as if he’s been filled with warm water, then doused with cold.

“Which is why he didn’t tell you,” he says. “Imagine the scandal … first Black ever to be Sorted Gryffindor expelled? How would that have looked?”

“You’re right,” she says. “But it doesn’t make it any better. Severus, for what it’s worth, I’m so sorry.”

She puts her glass on the dresser and stands there for a few moments, looking down at it as if she doesn’t know what else to do.

Finally, she says, “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive Albus for this.”

Now the snort escapes from Severus, and she looks up at him.

“You’ll find a way,” Severus says. There is no rancour in his voice, and he feels surprisingly little.

“I expect I will,” she sighs.

The Firewhisky bottle is noticeably depleted, but she picks it up and pours another finger into each of their glasses.

“Have another drink with me, Severus,” she says.

They both sit at the edge of the bed again and share the drink in silence. Severus wonders what she’s thinking.

His own brain is quiet for once. If he didn’t have the sorry example of his drunken da, and if he weren’t going to be needed to spy on the Dark Lord sometime in the near future, he’d consider becoming an alcoholic.

Minerva is looking at him in a way she hasn’t done before. He can’t quite name it, but it isn’t amusement or curiosity or concern or, thank Merlin, pity—excuse me, _empathy_ —but it’s arresting. Her cheeks are pink, and her eyes are deep and blinking at him, and her mouth is thin but somehow inviting.

As if watching himself from a great distance, he leans in and kisses her.

She doesn’t respond for a moment, but then she does, parting her lips and putting a hand against his chest.

_Is this fucking up?_

He has no idea. But he finds he doesn’t care, as the kiss goes on, and they both drop their glasses, which splash the dregs of the Firewhisky all over them and the bedclothes before thunking to the carpeted floor.

His arms come around her. She tastes of Firewhisky, and his potions master’s nose catalogues the fragrances of her familiar, mild scent: lavender and bergamot, with a woody hint of labdanum.

When he pulls her down on the bed, she breaks the moment and sits up.

“This is a bad idea, Severus,” she says.

“Definitely. Fucking a Death Eater is definitely a very bad idea,” he says. He’s trying to sound angry, but strangely, he isn’t. Maybe it’s the sense-dulling properties of the Firewhisky. Although the message doesn’t seem to have got through to his prick, which isn’t any the less alert for the liquor.

“That’s not what I mean,” she says. “I will confess that I wanted you to kiss me. Kiss me, and perhaps more. I don’t know.”

_Are all women this impossible?_

“We’re both drunk,” she says. “And sex changes things, even if we tell ourselves it won’t.”

His tongue is heavy, and he doesn’t trust it, so he just grunts at her.

Of course, she’s an infuriating Gryffindor, so she goes on talking instead of leaving, like any decent Slytherin would do under the circumstances.

“That isn’t bad in itself, but I rather like how things have evolved between us. I wouldn’t want to jeopardise that. And I’m your superior.”

“And you’re thirty years older than I am.”

He says it to wound her, to embarrass her and get her to go so he can have a good wank, or fall into a sodden sleep, but her expression is one of familiar amusement.

“If you had a problem with that, Severus, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But by all means, talk yourself out of it. It means I don’t have to.”

“You don’t have to. It was a momentary aberration. It’s over.”

She glances at his tented trousers. “Your cock says otherwise.”

“He resists the impulse to shield his crotch from her appraising eye with his hands.

“It has a mind of its own,” he says.

“As they so often do.”

“And do … quims?”

He was going to say “cunts,” but somehow, he couldn’t say the word to her. Stupid. His dick is aching to shag her, but his tongue still thinks of her as Minerva the Virgin Goddess, apparently. Even his favourite body parts can’t agree on an appraisal of Minerva McGonagall, apparently.

“They do, as it happens,” she says. She pulls her wand and aims it at him, and he’s afraid for a moment that she’s going to hex him, but she says, “ _Tergeo._ ”

She repeats the cleaning spell on herself and on the bedclothes and picks the discarded glasses off the floor and places them on the dresser. When she addresses him again, her tone is serious.

“Tomorrow, we will spend the night in a hotel, either in New York City or in Rome. The one in Italy. If we are both reasonably sober, and if you are still interested in … this”—she points between Severus and herself—“knock on my door. Goodnight, Severus.”

The door clicks behind her before he can think of something witty to say.


	6. Chapter 6

## Six

**31 October 1991**

“Hold still!”

Minerva casts a spell on Severus’s bloodied right leg, and he lets out a yelp of pain.

“Be careful, woman. It’s not a fucking matchstick you’re trying to Transfigure.”

“Even a sentient matchstick would have better sense than to get himself mangled by a three-headed hellhound. Honestly, where was your wand?”

“How was I to know my _Stupefy_ would only work on one of its heads?”

“You might have asked Hagrid.”

“Yes, because there was so much time for a chat between ‘Troll in the dungeons’ and ‘keep Quirrell from getting the Philosopher’s Stone.’”

She squints at the wound, looking for what, Severus doesn’t know, as she speaks.

“I don’t know why you’re so fixated on Quirinius. Just because he changed from Muggle Studies to Defence doesn’t mean he’s a Dark wizard. You’ve applied to change from Potions to Defence every year for the past five, if I recall correctly.”

“Even you must have noticed how odd he’s become since returning from Albania. _Ouch!_ ”

She’s stuck her wand into the wound, retrieving a bit of torn cloth from his trousers.

“I said, _hold still_. This needs to be cleaned properly unless you want to spend next month in the infirmary. I still don’t know why you wanted me to do this rather than Poppy.”

“It must be your bedside manner,” he says through gritted teeth. “Or maybe we can consider this foreplay.”

She looks up from her work.

“I didn’t think you’d be coming tonight.”

“Oh, I’ll be coming tonight, Minerva. Don’t even think of using my injury as an excuse to beg off.”

She returns to her work. “You’re much less amusing than you think.”

She runs her wand carefully along the wound, bringing its ragged edges together and syphoning off the dried blood. “There. That’s the best I can do with it. If you want to avoid scars, though, you’d best see Poppy.”

“A few more scars won’t matter,” he says, putting on his teaching robe. “Nine o’clock?”

“Better make it ten. I expect Albus will want a debriefing.”

Severus is relieved. She’s apparently over their latest row about Potter and his Nimbus Fucking 2000. Severus has been afraid the tension caused by the baleful presence of James’s spawn at Hogwarts would permanently damage their … whatever it was.

He’s resisted putting a name to it, even two years after their first tryst in Rome.

They didn’t speak of what had happened the night they’d been Portkeyed to the wrong city. The following morning, they got up, and she Side-Alonged him to an alley outside the New York MACUSA office, and they saw a few of the sights while the new Portkey was being made.

When they arrived in Via Aradia, Minerva went straight to the conference stage to deliver her talk, while Severus registered them at the hotel. They attended a conference session on implicit bias against Muggle-borns in the secondary school curriculum, which was, they both agreed over dinner together, better than they’d anticipated, and had dinner together. Water was the beverage of choice at their table.

The relief on her face when she answered his knock at her hotel room door banished any misgivings he had. The night that ensued was at turns delirious, awkward, instructive, messy, and altogether easier than he expected.

He has nothing to compare it to, but he thinks they do sex surprisingly well. At least, he was surprised. He doesn’t know what Minerva thinks about it, but she keeps coming to his bed, and letting him into hers, at regular intervals, so he takes it to mean she enjoys what they do.

And it has changed things, as she said it would. But, uniquely in Severus’s experience, they haven’t changed for the worse. Quite the reverse, in fact. They are, if anything, freer with one another than before, and their … friendship … has only become at the same time more comfortable and more challenging, its edges sharper, its grooves smoother, its depths richer.

They will overcome their recent squabbles, he thinks as he makes his stealthy way up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower that night. There is another war coming, and they need to take pleasure and, dare he even think it, happiness, where they can. Who else can they turn to, after all? Both up to their necks in Dumbledorian plots and secrets, it would be foolhardy for either of them to take up with someone else on intimate terms.

He shakes his head to clear it. She would tell him that these sorts of thoughts are pointless and self-pitying, and he doesn’t mind her voice in his head telling him so.

When she opens the door to admit him to her rooms, his darker thoughts evaporate. She is here, and he is here, and it is enough.

_~FIN~_

**Author's Note:**

> ## Acknowledgements
> 
> This story was written for MyWitch during the 2020 HoggywartyXmas Fest on LiveJournal.
> 
> * * *
> 
> ## Copyright
> 
> Copyright © 2020 by Squibstress.
> 
> This work of fiction is based on characters and settings created by J. K. Rowling. All recognisable characters, settings, and plot elements are copyright © J. K. Rowling.
> 
> The author believes this work falls within the scope of the Fair Use Doctrine as a _transformative work._ For more information, see the Organization for Transformative Works.
> 
> All original characters, settings, and plot elements are copyright © Squibstress.
> 
> This work of fiction is available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
> 
> Squibstress  
>  [squibstress@gmail.com](mailto:squibstress@gmail.com)  
>  [www.squibstress.wordpress.com](www.squibstress.wordpress.com)
> 
> Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
> 
> Within a Forest Dark/ Squibstress. -- 1st ed.


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